Throughout the nineteenth century, American artists were tangled in debates regarding the representation of reality. The Hudson River School of picturesque landscape painters tackled this dilemma with a compromise formula which used the real objects of nature to create ideal scenes. This dissertation applies the same picturesque formula to select examples of literary portraiture, studied under the concept of “picturesque portraiture.” Whereas the Hudson River compromise resulted in an ideal perception of reality, however, the picturesque portraits composed by nineteenth-century authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James attempt to invoke a non-idealized “actual” reality of the portrait subject’s person (though in the case of James, it is not reality itself which results, but the appearance of non-idealized “actual” reality).
This integrative study of American literature and fine arts is situated within nineteenth-century epistemological thought, beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ideal theory, which sees the real as the ideal. Emerson’s ideal theory thus stands as the basis against which Hawthorne’s, Melville’s, and James’s epistemological thinking is measured, and to which they are responding in their attempts to render reality in literary portraiture. Each chapter addresses how these authors define reality and, through the application of picturesque portraiture, demonstrates how each uses the Hudson River’s compromise formula in literary portraiture to forward their own uses and conceptions of the picturesque and reality, respectively. This work helps acknowledge competing notions of reality throughout the nineteenth century as well as changing ideas about the image with the approach of modernism.
","abstract_html":"<p>Throughout the nineteenth century, American artists were tangled in debates regarding the representation of reality. The Hudson River School of picturesque landscape painters tackled this dilemma with a compromise formula which used the real objects of nature to create ideal scenes. This dissertation applies the same picturesque formula to select examples of literary portraiture, studied under the concept of “picturesque portraiture.” Whereas the Hudson River compromise resulted in an ideal perception of reality, however, the picturesque portraits composed by nineteenth-century authors Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Henry James attempt to invoke a non-idealized “actual” reality of the portrait subject’s person (though in the case of James, it is not reality itself which results, but the appearance of non-idealized “actual” reality).</p> <p>This integrative study of American literature and fine arts is situated within nineteenth-century epistemological thought, beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ideal theory, which sees the real as the ideal. Emerson’s ideal theory thus stands as the basis against which Hawthorne’s, Melville’s, and James’s epistemological thinking is measured, and to which they are responding in their attempts to render reality in literary portraiture. Each chapter addresses how these authors define reality and, through the application of picturesque portraiture, demonstrates how each uses the Hudson River’s compromise formula in literary portraiture to forward their own uses and conceptions of the picturesque and reality, respectively. This work helps acknowledge competing notions of reality throughout the nineteenth century as well as changing ideas about the image with the approach of modernism.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Gattuso Densmore, Angela Michael"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Clark Davis","Ryan Perry","Eleanor McNees","Martin Bickman"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2024,"date_issued":"2024-06-15T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2024-06-15T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:01:48Z","subjects":["Literature","Reality","Idealism","Nathaniel Hawthorne","Herman Melville","Henry James","Arts and Humanities","English Language and Literature","Epistemology","Literature in English, North America"],"languages":["English (eng)"],"rights":["Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
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This integrative study of American literature and fine arts is situated within nineteenth-century epistemological thought, beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ideal theory, which sees the real as the ideal. Emerson’s ideal theory thus stands as the basis against which Hawthorne’s, Melville’s, and James’s epistemological thinking is measured, and to which they are responding in their attempts to render reality in literary portraiture. Each chapter addresses how these authors define reality and, through the application of picturesque portraiture, demonstrates how each uses the Hudson River’s compromise formula in literary portraiture to forward their own uses and conceptions of the picturesque and reality, respectively. This work helps acknowledge competing notions of reality throughout the nineteenth century as well as changing ideas about the image with the approach of modernism.
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This integrative study of American literature and fine arts is situated within nineteenth-century epistemological thought, beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his ideal theory, which sees the real as the ideal. Emerson’s ideal theory thus stands as the basis against which Hawthorne’s, Melville’s, and James’s epistemological thinking is measured, and to which they are responding in their attempts to render reality in literary portraiture. Each chapter addresses how these authors define reality and, through the application of picturesque portraiture, demonstrates how each uses the Hudson River’s compromise formula in literary portraiture to forward their own uses and conceptions of the picturesque and reality, respectively. This work helps acknowledge competing notions of reality throughout the nineteenth century as well as changing ideas about the image with the approach of modernism.
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"],"dc:subject":["Literature","Reality","Idealism","Nathaniel Hawthorne","Herman Melville","Henry James","Arts and Humanities","English Language and Literature","Epistemology","Literature in English, North America"],"dc:title":["Picturesque Portraiture: The Composition of Reality in Hawthorne, Melville, and James"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:01:48Z"}